Intecol 9, Day 2

Dr. Brij Gopal spoke about the experiences from Wetland conservation in India. He pointed out that human dependence on wetlands has been highest in the tropical and subtropical regions, and that wetland restoration for waterfowl, although a recent trend in Europe and the U.S. occurred already in the 10^th century. Sri Lanka has more than 10 000 human made water reservoirs that can be seen as artificial wetlands. In India wetlands first became known as a nuisance to human health during the British colonization. He voiced criticism against how the Ramsar convention is followed, since countries who have signed the convention has pledged to also conserve wetlands that they have not listed as Ramsar sites, and this is not occurring.

Dr. Karin Kattenring had an interesting presentation about the problem of a European genotype of Phragmites australis that has become invasive in the U.S., although Phragmites australis is indeed a problem in European wetlands as well. Genetic analysis shows that the species although capable of spreading clonaly is spreading sexually at their site. They have found that the viability of the seeds is linked to cross fertilization, and they are now attempting a conservation strategy by spraying Glycophosphate (The thing in Roundup) on Phragmites australis to reduce the population, and thereby the genetic diversity, which should make the seeds less viable. Personally the idea of spraying Glycophosphate in a wetland is not very appealing to me, but there are indeed culture differences between Europe and the. U.S. when it comes to conservation and restoration (we don´t get to play with flame throwers for example). Dr. Kattering told about that she introduced Phragmites australis into a wetland for an important experiment, and brought down a lot of laughter when she added. “Yes, I admit, we did introduce Phragmites australis into a wetland, and I don´t always sleep very well when I think about it.”

Dr. Chris Joyce spoke about the effects of rewetting as a part of the E.U. agri-environmental schemes, and his groups results show that sedges benefited from rewetting, and that the change in hydrology had a much higher influence than management regime.

Dr. David Growing and Professor Norbert Hölzel both presented information about restoration of wet grasslands, were Growings experience showed that restorations should be done several years in a row to avoid to high founder effects which sounds logical. Hölzel was of a different opinion as he presented results that showed that seeds that don´t germinate the first year after top-soil removal with subsequent hay-transfer often germinate the following years. A discussion about the invasiveness about top-soil removal followed, since it is not very common in the U.S. It should be said though, that in sites were the nitrogen level, the phosphorous level and the unwanted seed bank is high, and the water table is to low, then top-soil removal is a good way to restore both wet grasslands and fens. Compared to rewetting it also releases far less methane emission as Lukasz Kozub´s poster at this conference showed. It is however a method that is invasive (you do not conserve the soil), and expensive. 

Intecol 9 Arriving, pre-conference trip and day 1

After 12 hours on the plane I had reached Orlando, and was ready for the 1 hour line at the US Custom and Border control. Clearly there has been a change, because compared to previous times, the staff were very welcoming, and not the “How dare you stand in line and create so much work for me”-attitude that has been the previous experience. Someone clearly told them that they are the face of the nation, and they listened.

The following day was the pre-conference trip, and I was heading to Wekiwa springs for canoeing on the spring run. Alligators, turtles, Leather-fern, alligator lily and a splashing otter were seen, although I never saw the alligator, but I take the other peoples word for it. After the pre-conference trip I put up my colleagues poster that I am presenting in his absence. It is at board 166 and has attracted some attention at least.

Today was the first day of the Intecol 9 conference, and 1400 people are attending from what I have heard. It started with welcoming speeches by among others the Florida Senator Bob Graham, who got a spontaneous applaud from the 1400 scientists when he said that cutting funding for the environment is not the way out of the economic crisis. He also commented on the denial of climate change and evolution that has been heard from other politicians. He said that “I will give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are not so stupid that they don´t know that it is a fact, but that they deny it for political convenience. “

When the parallel presentations started it was a constant running from room to room, if one wanted to hear the presentations that sounded interesting. This is dependent on that everybody in all rooms follow the time limit, and most of the time it worked very well. Information I picked up the first day.

Qianxin Lin showed how Juncus is much more sensitive to oil exposure than Spartina is, and this was demonstrated both by monitoring the effect of the Deep-water Horizon oil spill, and experimental testing of oil exposure of the two plants at various concentrations of oil.

Micaleila Desotelle spoke about a major oil-sand spill from a pipeline that transports tar-sand oil. It occurred in Michigan right after the Deep-water Horizon oil spill, and therefore got limited media coverage. Birds, turtles, mammals and vegetation were affected.

Sylvie de Blois presented information on how climate models can predict very accurately the current distribution of wetland species in Quebec, but not the distribution of abundance. The models show that species will shift their range 2 degrees (300 km) north somewhere between 2071 and 2100.

Among the posters there was one comment on a poster by Cimon-Morin et al. that I found interesting. The poster presented information regarding how to use ecosystem services for wetland conservation planning in remote areas. They conclude that the economic value of ecosystem services decrease the further away a site is from populated areas, but at the same time the regulating functions (e.g. high biodiversity) increases, which raises the question of the value of evaluating ecosystem services in this way.

There were plenty of more that was presented, but these are my highlights of day 1. 

On Thursday 11:20 is my presentation about using Functional Diversity analysis to analyze environmental constraints in restoration.

Recruiting new scientists

Last Tuesday I got the chance to talk about peatland restoration with a younger audience than the one I usually teach. The bilingual pre-school were my 3 year old son goes had asked me to come and talk about my work, with kids who speak mostly polish, and a bit of English. The challenge was explaining it in a language they could understand. Fen became “a place in nature with a lot of water and a lot of flowers”. I explained how

“flowers disappeared from these places when people earlier removed the water to grow food. Today we don´t grow food on all these places, and we want to bring back the flowers. If we want the flowers back, we have to get the water back again. Then we can go to other places were there are flowers and take seeds and spread the seeds.”

They really understood it, and seamed interested. I brought a small Herbarium, a Flora book, a 30 m measuring tape for field work, and a pair of wading-boots. The wading boots was an instant hit, and it was fun seeing kids wanting to try boots that were larger than they were, and big enough for them to fit entirely into one leg. The measuring tape that never seamed to end was also to great enjoyment to kids who quickly took the tape and encircled the room. Something clicked, and they will now this spring collect flowers and make a mini herbarium. Children have a natural curiosity, and in the end that is what all science is based on.

All is well in the universe – almost; or will be – some day.

4 days have passed since I received the in print version of our paper, and with eyes large as dinner plates, and the chin dropped down to the floor tried to grasp the fact that lightning had indeed struck twice. Obviously I was disappointed, but most of all I felt as if all the work that I and others put in was not taken seriously, and that hurt. This blog, who mostly has been a place for me to share my work and ideas with friends at home, got flooded and it hasn´t stopped.

I do want to say this. I am very grateful for that everybody from the Journal Manager Ms Shanmugam, the handling editor, the chief editor Professor Primack, Dr Broerse at the Publishing department, and senior vice president of Elsevier Journal Publishing Mr Terheggen have expressed understanding, apologized, and taken quick actions to correct this.

I understand that the entire Issue has been put on hold, and this illustrates clearly how seriously you take this incident, which I think speaks well of you.

Elsevier added value. The story of how a figure from a paper by other scientists ended up in our paper

What I will show you in this post is hopefully the worst example of scientific editing by a publisher that you will ever see. As scientists we spend endless times in the field. As peatland scientists this involves hard sweaty work in terrain with no shade and lot of mosquitoes. When we have the data we spend a long time analyzing it and writing a manuscript. We choose a journal that we see fit for the study. Other scientists volunteer their time as reviewers. Then the paper, if accepted, goes over to the publisher who in this case is Elsevier. Elsevier has recently been criticized by a big boycott campaign for charging high prices fore their journals, but one of the arguments made by Elsevier has been the “added value” they bring to a manuscript. Many times this “added value” is indeed real. The layout is nice, typos are identified. Sometimes however, you end up with something so messed up that you first lack words to describe it. “I am shocked” and “One of the worst mistakes I have ever seen” are so far comments I have heard from distinguished colleagues in the field with decades of experience.

Directly when our paper was made available online at Science Direct I realized that something was very wrong with figure 3d. The error bar was hanging separated from the data point in one place, and was on the wrong year in the other series of the same graph. I directly contacted Elsevier and the Journal Manager got involved. She send me 2 versions and asked me which one was correct. I pointed out the one that she took from our raw manuscript. Phew problem solved you would think. You can see the wrong figure below, followed by the correct figure below it.

Wrong figure 3 d

Correct figure 3d

Yesterday the article went in print, and the wrong graph was switched to the correct one (bravo), but……..our figure 2 of the experimental layout had been switched to a completely wrong figure of a completely different paper about wildlife-friendly vs. wildlife-unfriendly farming. The correct figure is listed below, followed by the (for the context) horrendous figure that Elsevier put in.

Correct figure 2

Wrong figure 2 (can you spot the difference?)

Perhaps I am being to harsh here. I mean, at least the figure text below is still the same (although it now has no connection to the figure).

I have no words for how this could have happened, except perhaps intentional sabotage. Other options are blatant incompetence. It sure adds something to the paper, but what it adds has no value. Who are the people working at the production team? Have they any idea about scientific editing at all. Do they know anything about separating files from different projects? Has the entire work been outsourced so far that Elsevier has really no control anymore, or is this their level of competence in editing?

How this could have happened, I simply do not know. I just know that it absolutely raises the question what the “added value” Elsevier brings really is, if they are unable to identify such an obvious mistake before sending it out for print.

I will present this study on the Intecol 9th International Wetland Conference in Orlando, U.S.A. in June, and it will also be referred to during SER 2012: 8th European Conference on Ecological Restoration in Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic in September. I can only hope that this mother-and-father of editing mistakes has been fixed by then. We will of course demand a correction. Should it not have been fixed, well perhaps we can only apologize and refer to the mistake as “Elsevier added value”.

I also here would like to apologize to the people who Elsevier took this figure from and put it into our paper and send it out for print. We had nothing to do with this as you certainly already knew. I only hope you did not receive our figure in your paper, but considering what has happened so far, it wouldn´t come as a shock anymore.

Do we really need the Ramsar convention?

Today I held a lecture on the topic “International Conventions of importance for Biodiversity”. Having explained the Ramsar convention (protection of wetland), I showed how despite that a nation has signed the Ramsar convention, they can take actions that threaten wetlands in such a way that the loss can not be compensated. This resulted in a discussion about the value of the Ramsar convention. The specific case I mentioned, were a nation was clearly violating the Ramsar convention despite having signed it, was Iceland and its large expansion of hydropower, for the ever increasing number of aluminum smelters along the coast. Lake Myvatn in Iceland is a Ramsar site and it is affected by hydropower. The same is true for another Ramsar site in Iceland, Thjörsárver. Recently a large area of pristine nature in Iceland was flooded when the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant was built, and several rivers were dammed resulting in the destruction of a long series of waterfalls. By signing the Ramsar convention, Iceland has agreed to, not only protect the wetlands it has designated as Ramsar sites, but to protect its other wetlands as well.

The problem is that the Ramsar convention is not a punitive convention. On the homepage of the convention it states that the violators of the convention risks international embarrasment. It is hardly a punishment that is likely to have any effect, considering the potential profit. There is neither any embarrassment, if the violator does not share the values expressed in the Ramsar convention. So the question is. Do we need the Ramsar convention, and if so why? Clearly spreading information about the importance of wetlands is of vital importance, but is really a Dress-Up-and-Pretend-To-Be convention the best way to do this.

I don´t have any clear answer to this. I do however think that watered down declarations have very limited use for the conservation of wetlands.

Jolted back

Jolting this blog back to life after a year long break that
included getting a new family member who now crawls around the apartment exploring everything with great curiosity. Research runs in her genes.

My paper "Vegetation recovery after multiple-site experimental fen restorations" is in press in Biological Conservation and will be presented at the 9th Intecol International Wetlands conference in Orlando in early June.